“Do you want me to ask for you?” he said.
“No, no need for that,” I said. “Just wondered, that’s all.”
I hung up.
Should never have rung in the first place.
Do you want me to ask for you?
What was he using for brains? Did he think I was fifteen years old?
I looked over at the bar. The two girls weren’t there anymore. I looked around to see if they’d managed to get a table.
They must have gone.
So tomorrow I’d have a piece about a woman who painted clouds.
What would a man like Geir make of that? If he even read the arts section, that is.
Not that he was thick or anything, unlike many of his colleagues. He’d just have a chuckle about how stupid it was, at the same time as acknowledging the spot I was in.
I’d have to have that piss now. Couldn’t sit there with my legs crossed like a kid.
I stood up and draped my jacket over the back of the chair. The stains under my arms were as big as bathing rings, it was hard not to think about it as I passed between the tables on my way to the toilet, the urge to piss becoming greater the closer I got, I’d be bursting in a minute. Once I was through the door I sensed relief, only to discover there were three people queued up in front of me at the urinals, and some others waiting for a cubicle.
I felt a dribble, not much though, nothing the old undies wouldn’t absorb. I could live with that. Only next time it wouldn’t be a dribble but a splash.
I shifted my weight onto my other foot.
Two ahead of me now.
I wasn’t going to make it.
As soon as one of the men already at the urinals gave his tackle a shake, zipped up and turned round to go, I barged in front of the guy whose turn it was and stepped up to the white bowl.
“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” he said. “There’s a queue here!”
It was so good to let go I felt like breaking into song.
I turned my head to look at him as my piss sprayed hard against the porcelain. He had a scraggly beard and glasses, and looked like he fixed the computers in a small business.
“Thanks for letting me in,” I said.
“I didn’t, you barged in front of me!”
“Yeah, all right,” I said, turning round again and finishing off. “There you go! Your turn.”
He shook his head to tell me what an idiot I was, but it was only in resignation, nothing to pull him up about.
On my way back, I stopped at the table where Turid’s old workmates were sat. It’d be odd not to talk to them, and Turid definitely wouldn’t be pleased if she got word I hadn’t.
“You all right there?” I said.
The boozy faces that turned toward me beamed gormlessly.
“Hello,” said the one with the curly hair, whose name I suddenly remembered was Jorunn. “Out on the town, are we?”
“No, just a beer after work,” I said. “You lot look like you’re in for the long haul, though!”
“We miss Turid,” she said.
“I’m sure she misses you, too,” I said.
“Sit yourself down and have a beer with us,” said a guy whose name was Frank, a small, stocky fellow with a mustache who I’d never been able to stand. “Seeing as you’re on your own over there!”
“Thanks, just the same,” I said. “I’m waiting for the rest of my crowd. Where are you all off to?”
“Zachen, maybe,” said Jorunn. “We’ll see.”
“All right,” I said. “Nice to see you!”
“Say hello to Turid!”
“Will do,” I said.
Left a little trap for myself there, I thought as I sat down again at my own table. If they didn’t leave soon, they’d see that nobody else came and think “the rest of my crowd” was something I’d made up. And why would I do that? Because, they’d think, he didn’t want to be seen as someone who drank on his own. And why would that be? Could it be that Turid’s husband is lonely?
I knew everyone in this fucking town. High and low, from King Solomon to Harry the Hatter.
I was having a couple of beers after work, that was all. I didn’t give a shit what they thought.
Still, might be an idea to move on somewhere else, new pastures and that. Maybe Verftet after all? They did a nice sunset out there. Always a good feeling, tanking up as the sun goes down.
Sounded like a poetry collection.
Tanking Up. Poems, Jostein Lindland.
Not as good as the old favorite, though.
Setting Sun-days. Poems, Jostein Lindland.
Or did it need the hyphen?
Setting Sundays.
That was cleaner. Better.
Hemingway always had good titles. The Sun Also Rises. For Whom the Bell Tolls. The Old Man and the Sea.
I took a good slurp and lit a cig. There wasn’t a woman under forty in the place now. They looked like hens the way they sat clucking with their croaky voices. And the men were like cockerels, sticking their chests out and trying to impress.
Like that little squirt at Turid’s work. He’d been lifting so many weights his arms pointed out from his sides when he walked, as if they were branches rather than arms. But who would fancy a dwarf with bulging biceps and a barrel chest?
No, time to move on.
I got my phone out and held it to my ear.
“Yes?” I said, and paused. “I’ll be right there.”
I put the phone back in my inside pocket, picked up my ciggies and got to my feet, lifted my hand in a wave and smiled in the direction of Turid’s colleagues, before going to the bar and paying the bill.
The trees threw long shadows across the square. The windows of the apartments on the other side twinkled in the sunlight. If I hadn’t known better, I could have been in Paris, I thought to myself. Wide boulevards, rows of leafy trees, sidewalk cafes, people everywhere. And if Mariakirken wasn’t exactly Notre-Dame, it was at least from the same period. Or was it?
I’d have to check that someday, I thought as I passed the music shop on the corner and crossed over to the theater side.
Two homeless people were lying in sleeping bags up against the wall. One had a shopping trolley next to him full of stuff, the other a bike laden with all sorts of bags. One of the two faces was partially visible, brown as a nut, leathery as an old wallet.
The summer must have been good for them too.
Maybe it wouldn’t be all that bad? Let go of everything, no responsibilities, totally free. A bit of begging, a bit of thieving if needs be. If you’d already given in, it’d hardly make much odds. Drink yourself senseless whenever you liked, or all the time for that matter.
Cold in winter, true.
Not much fun sleeping out, true.
But some of the sleeping bags these days would keep out minus twenty, at least. Nick one of them. Thermal undies and a good thick coat, some decent footwear for the winter.
It was the drugs that destroyed them, nothing else.
At the bottom of the gentle hill that leads down toward Nøstet, my eye passed over the old swimming baths. I’d always liked walking by there because of the smell of chlorine that streamed out of the ventilation system. Not anymore, though, not since the place had been turned into an arts venue. Close on a billion kroner it had set them back. And for whose benefit?
Experimental theater groups.
Christ on a bike.
Once, a few years back, I’d been stupid enough to buy tickets for one of their theater festivals. A French theater group was putting on Faust in the old tram sheds at Møhlenpris. I’d never seen such rubbish. And I’d seen rubbish in my time. Four or five performers in black coats and long beaks instead of noses, warbling about the stage and mumbling for four hours straight. That was it. All the way from Franc
e to Bergen for that.
Freezing cold too, it’d been.
But the worst thing was no one called them out. It was all smiles and nods afterward, everyone agreeing how “powerful” it had been, how “intense” or “existentially disturbing”—and those were just a couple of the comments I overheard. They didn’t mean a word of what they were saying. But somehow people have got it into their heads that they have to like what they don’t like, that it’s actually good, thereby legitimizing the shit so you can be sure there’ll be more shit to come, instead of putting a plug in it once and for all.
A billion kroner! For a bunch of layabouts screeching and carrying on and pretending they’re giving us something of value, whereas what they’re actually doing is taking. Taking our money, taking our time, and taking our self-respect too, because that’s what we lose if we keep saying something’s good when it isn’t.
The only thing they give us is shit.
Those clouds were a fulfillment by comparison, pure Michelangelo.
Faust, my ass.
All right.
The smell of exhaust fumes and seawater that filled the air down by the harbor wasn’t bad either.
I stopped and lit a cig before carrying on up Murallmenningen into Skottegaten. Unbelievably, it was no more than five o’clock.
Should I phone Turid and tell her I’d be late?
Because I would be. No point in conning myself.
She’d be off to work at quarter to eight, besides spending at least a quarter of an hour getting ready. So there was no sense hurrying home for that half-hour.
I could text her just before seven and tell her I was running late. How late would be up to me, she wouldn’t be there then.
And Ole wouldn’t care.
Or would he?
I wondered what he thought about me.
Better give him a ring now, in case I was too drunk later on.
I dropped my cig end onto the sidewalk and stepped on it as I took my phone out of my pocket.
In the building on the corner, up the stairs on the first floor, was where the first girlfriend I’d been with had lived. Agnes, her name was. She’d shared the place with a friend of hers. What was her name again? Mari? No. Marit? No. Margit, that was it.
Agnes and Margit from Sandnes.
I scrolled down until I found his number and then tapped it.
While it was ringing I looked up at the windows and tried to remember what it had looked like in there, what kind of furnishings there’d been.
A light gray wall-to-wall carpet, as I recalled.
Pinewood coffee table?
A red armchair.
Oh, I’d fucked her in that chair once. She’d sat there in the nude with her legs apart and her pussy all wet, and I’d leaned over her and dipped my cock inside her.
The phone rang four times and then went dead. Ole had declined the call. Maybe just as well, for the thought of Agnes in that chair had given me a hard-on.
I stuck my hands in my pockets and carried on, stroking my dick with the fingers of one hand as I went. Giving it a little squeeze now and then. Oh yes. Now I’d have to nip out to the toilet when I got there, get the job done properly. I just had to keep it going until then.
She might not have been the best looker in the world, Agnes, but what a body she had. Big, firm tits. Nothing I’d liked better than standing behind her and cupping them in my hands. Supple and pliant, she was too.
It was beyond me now, how I could have got sick of it and dumped her.
What I’d give to be able to ring that doorbell again.
I looked down the hill at the blue water of the fjord that was visible above the rooftops while I imagined her figure coming down the stairs, how I’d follow her up, into her room, into her bed . . .
By the time the old sardine factory came into view I’d gone limp again, and no amount of stroking and squeezing was getting me hard as I turned round the side of the building onto the decking where the outdoor serving area was.
A bit of effort in the toilet and it’d be no problem, I thought to myself, but getting it back up from a standing start, was it really worth the effort? It wasn’t, I decided, so I passed among the tables and sat down at one that was free at the far end.
The hills out on Askøy were a lush green across the fjord, which was still and shining, only a slightly darker shade than the sky. For some reason, there was a mist farther out, a foggy kind of light that blurred the colors there.
In the middle of the fjord was what looked like a salvage vessel, a huge jet of water arcing into the air from it and plunging back into the sea. Another vessel appeared from behind the first one, so there was plenty of activity out there.
I bought two pints, it’d save me the bother of going twice.
Ole.
Did I have to think about him now?
I took a slurp, lit a cig, leaned back in the chair while fidgeting with the beer mat on the table in front of me and looked out over the water.
There was nothing to think about, because there was nothing I could do.
Turid had suggested not long ago that I take him on a trip somewhere, just the two of us, a father and son thing. Most likely she’d got the idea from a film she’d seen.
“And where were you thinking we should go?” I said.
She’d shrugged then and turned her palms upward, the way she always did when leaving something to me.
“Anywhere you like.”
“Are we talking Scandinavia or Europe now? Or another continent? Should I take him to Africa, do you think?”
“No need to be sarcastic,” she said. “What about Copenhagen? Stockholm?”
“I’m not going to fucking Stockholm with him, that’s for sure,” I said.
“Copenhagen, then.”
“And what are we supposed to do there?”
She shrugged again.
“Have a nice time together?”
“The only thing he’s interested in is his gaming. I know exactly what it’d be like. We’d sit there at one restaurant after another without saying a word to each other. Do you realize how unbearable it’d be?”
“It wouldn’t have to be like that. Maybe the two of you being together there instead of at home would make things different,” she said.
I hadn’t a clue how she’d got it into her head that things could be different. Perhaps it was a mother’s love for her son. That kind of love could make you blind too. Not that I was going to present the truth to her, I kept that to myself. But the truth was that our son was a loser.
That made me a loser too.
A year ago we’d driven across the fells to Oslo, he was starting university there, on the Blindern campus. Biology, he reckoned he’d choose after the foundation year. He’d hardly been in a forest in his life. I glanced at him in the rear-view every now and then as he sat in the back staring out the window. Silent and withdrawn, not a smile in sight.
“Cheer up, back there!” I said. “You’re free at last!”
He just gawked at me in the mirror.
He’d got a room in dorms up in Sognsvann. We carried the few things he had with him inside, and then Turid and I went off to a hotel while he spent his first night in his own place. The next day I took him out to IKEA. Turid went to see her sister and her sister’s family out in Nittedal, and even if a trip to IKEA with Ole wasn’t exactly a dream scenario, I was glad to avoid seeing them.
“You’ll need a frying pan. Will this one do you?”
“I don’t know.”
“We’ll take it, then.”
“OK.”
And that’s how it went on, the trolley filling up with glasses and plates, kitchen utensils, rugs and plants. I was determined it wouldn’t get me down and tried my best to keep a conversation going in the cafeteria afterward. He sat there pok
ing at his food, muttering a yes or a no every now and again.
He’d got into the habit of cutting his own hair with the clippers. It was like a centimeter-thick mat on his head. He never looked anyone in the eye, so it was impossible to engage with him, all you got was evasion and avoidance.
But avoidance of what?
I didn’t like talking about him with Turid, and I didn’t like the psychologizing people came up with as soon as things weren’t going like clockwork in a life—what does it help to put a name to something?—but on our way back over the fells that Sunday a year ago I made an exception.
“Do you think the boy’s depressed?” I said. I stared at the road ahead that ran straight as a die across the moors and between the rocky outcrops, but I could see out of the corner of my eye that Turid was looking at me.
There was a silence for a moment.
“Why are you asking that?” she said.
“He never smiles. He never talks. He hardly eats. There’s no energy in him. No strength.”
I glanced at her as I changed gear and overtook the motor home that had just turned out of a rest area onto the road in front of us.
“He’s always been quiet,” she said.
“True,” I said, noting in the mirror that the motor home was already a good way behind us.
She fell silent again.
But there was more to come, if only I waited.
“He’s never had much of an appetite either,” she said after a bit.
“No, he hasn’t,” I said.
“What makes you think he’s depressed?” she said.
“I’m not saying he is,” I said. “It was a question, that’s all.”
We drove on for a while with neither of us speaking. A tarn appeared and was gone, its surface roughened by the strong wind, and we passed two cyclists who from a distance had looked like red balloons, the wind filling their jackets.
I reached out and switched the radio on.
“Do you think he’ll manage on his own?” Turid said.
“He’ll have to,” I said.
But of course he couldn’t. He said he was fine, said he was attending lectures, said he’d made friends, but none of it was true. Turid had a feeling something was wrong and turned up to see him unannounced. I told her not to, that it was the stupidest thing by far that we could do, but she brought him back home with her anyway.
The Morning Star Page 23